Abstract

The understanding and representation of spatial evolution over the time are at the core of two PhDs. These studies largely rely on the comparison of diverse inventories of the same territory from tax documents and maps: terriers and compoix. These documents provide a lot of information on the structure of rural and/or urban areas. However, comparing this kind of information, which was compiled in successive periods, is sometimes difficult, especially because of frequent absence of maps related to the registers. Thanks to ANR ModelEspace’s work, it is now possible to study these documents by exploiting their topological properties: information from textual and/or planimetric sources is modelled as a graph which permits a comparison in order to analyse the spatial dynamics of land over time. That is why this method for processing spatial data is applied to the territory of Blandy-les-Tours (77) and Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val (82) to observe land tenure, social and landscape dynamics.